Buying tickets to an event (e.g., a live entertainment performance) can be a chaotic and anxious experience for most fans, especially when the event is a very popular one with a limited supply of tickets for a large fan base. Today, a common ticket purchasing scenario typically starts with an announcement that tickets for an event go on sale at a certain time on a certain day. A fan who is interested in buying one or more of those tickets is often required to login to a ticket purchasing website just prior to a sale window for customers to purchase tickets online. If the fan works during typical business hours, he/she is forced to inconveniently login from an employer's computer during his/her workday, as ticket sale windows inevitably begin in the middle of a workday (e.g., 9:00 AM on a weekday). Once the fan is logged-in to the website, his/her browser is directed to an electronic staging area, commonly referred to as a “waiting room,” before the fan even has an opportunity to buy tickets. After waiting (sometimes hours) in the waiting room, the fan's browser exits the waiting room only to find that tickets have been sold out; many of the tickets having been already purchased by programmatic software entities (e.g., Internet bots). Even if tickets are still available at the expiration of the waiting room period, the fan is typically given a very short time window (e.g., 5 minutes or less) to purchase tickets by clicking through multiple pages on the ticket purchasing website and entering user information (e.g., a credit card number, a shipping address, a billing address, etc.), all of which must be completed within the very short time window.
Such a ticket purchasing process, in and of itself, is, for most people, a very stressful, and inconvenient process that is both time consuming and time pressured. Much of the reason that the ticket purchasing process is so stressful is because of today's Internet-centric dependence on the functional operation of technology (e.g., mobile devices, computer networks, browser software, website software, etc.) during such time-critical processes. This dependence on the functional operation of technology during a time-critical process is perhaps most evident when a ticket purchasing website crashes multiple times during the ticket sale window due to the overload on the web servers from a high number of contemporaneous user requests to access the ticket purchasing website. When a technology failure like this occurs, a fan is often forced to restart his/her browser session (often multiple times during the ticket sale window) only to find that, on each subsequent browser restart, he/she has been placed at the back of the electronic queue of users and bots, requiring the fan to wait even longer to buy a ticket. The time consuming and cumbersome ticket purchasing process that exists today only exacerbates these issues. Despite being designed for convenience, Internet-based technology has its limitations, such as the uncertainty of seamless network connectivity, the potential for critical software (e.g., the website, browser applications, etc.) to crash, which, in turn, makes purchasing tickets in today's Internet-centric environment all the more problematic for prospective ticket purchasers. Such technology limitations were non-existent in the pre-Internet world. Because of this, prospective ticket purchasers in the pre-Internet world did not have to worry themselves about whether technology will be functioning properly while waiting in line to purchase tickets at a physical box office.
Furthermore, a general lack of awareness of an artist's (or groups') touring schedule often impedes the discovery of an event that a fan would otherwise be interested in attending. Sometimes, people are not even aware of events in their area that they may enjoy. There is simply an overabundance of events, artists, and content, which makes it impossible for fans to keep track of every single event that they might be interested in attending. Fans often hear about an event after tickets for the event have already sold out, or even after the event has transpired. This lack of discovery adds unnecessary friction to the existing ticket purchasing process because a fan must continually check an artist's fan page, or otherwise iteratively search online, for touring schedule updates from artists they are interested in, lest they miss out on purchasing tickets for interesting events.